Brave Five Minutes Longer
by Kuroi In a Black Hole
Summary: Heroism only works if there's a villain too. Drabbles on the heroes and villains of Supernatural.
1. I Burning Religion

Title: Burning Religion

Characters: Any

Idea: Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction.  
>Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662)<p>

The world was burning.

Ashes in the air settled on his nose, the back of his hands, his hair.

The sky was red and orange, burning with an intensity unrivaled.

He could feel the wind rip the warmth away from him. How ironic, the world was burning and half the population died from hypothermia and frostbite. The other half went up in the blaze.

They yelled their religion to empty air, crying out the apocalypse. It was here, it had arrived. He snorted. It had come so many years ago, and the battle had been lost all those years ago.

He held his gun close. The world was burning, and everything that stalked the night came out to play.

When the two Brothers finally faced each other, long long ago, it had decided the path from there.

Michael and Lucifer had burned everything.

All for paradise they never saw.

He wondered if religion made everyone crazy. Nearly everything that destroyed the world preached religion. Everything, everyone.

He hated religion.

Now though, it didn't really matter.

The world was burning.


	2. II They say he was a hero

Title: They say he was a hero

Characters: Lisa

Idea: "Heroing must be the worst job ever" – Unknown

They say he was a hero, that he saved the world.

They say he rode a big, black horse and helped people.

They say he could stare the devil in the face and laugh, and angels too.

They say he has a guardian angel who watches over him.

They say he is the bravest man alive, strong and brave and caring.

They say he never asked for nothing and never took anything as payment.

They say he's God's own warrior, here to save everyone.

They say he stopped the apocalypse.

When I look in on him at night, I think that heroing must be the worst job ever.

He may have saved the world, but he looks like someone tore apart his.

His horse is a black car that he can't even look at anymore, much less drive.

He doesn't laugh anymore, not ever. He doesn't really smile either.

His guardian angel is a tired, weary looking man in a trench coat who would be gorgeous if he would get about four years worth of sleep.

When he cries out at night, screaming for his brother, I can't see the brave, strong, caring man. All I see is someone who is barely alive, and doesn't really want to be.

All he wants is something no one can give him, because that thing he wants is dead.

This shell of a man, barely alive, is no one's warrior anymore. Not anymore.

He is a hero, I know that. He is a hero and a savior and a brother and a man, but he isn't really alive. Not anymore.


	3. III Heroic Coward

Title: Heroic Coward

Characters: Dean, Alastair

Idea: You cannot be a hero without being a coward. George Bernard Shaw

_You cannot hide from Me Dean I know everything._

His tough guy attitude, his cocky smile, his give-'em-hell attitude, hid a man who was deeply deeply afraid. He knew what his hands could do. He had felt blood slip over his skin, heard screams…

_Yes Dean, yes. Can't you feel it, the release when they scream? It's breathtaking. _

He hadn't come back whole. When Cas had yanked his soul out of the Pit and shoved him back in his body, he hadn't come back whole. He was missing something, something he had left back in Hell.

_Right there Dean. Yes, that's it. Right between those bones. Just push right it. Clean slice. Right through muscle and skin. Follow it now Dean. Trace the pattern…yes. My boy, you are magnificent. _

He drank every time he could. He downed bottle after bottle, not knowing why but feeling the empty pit in his stomach. He needed to fill it.

_I'm never letting you go Dean. Never…you'll always be here, with me. _

So he smiled and gave his best come hither look to every piece of ass walking by, and hid his face in his glass whenever Cas gave him that curious head tilt, looking like he could see inside him, whenever Sam started asking questions.

_You'll never get rid of me, cause you know. You know what you are now. You're mine. _

He slumped into his seat.


	4. IV Redemption or Nightmare

This was a prompt-fill for a tumblr party I participated in. The prompt was to do something with Rational Thoughts/Dreams. This is Castiel's Redemption and Jimmy's Dream. Spoilers only for Season 4/Jimmy being a vessel/Claire and Amelia's episode.

~~~~~~~This is a Beginning~~~~~~~

_Castiel felt the ache of the missing Grace he used to create this dream world keenly. An Angel was never supposed to tear their Grace, it was akin to removing a limb. But he felt responsible for this human soul he cradled deep within himself, this soul that once inhabited the body he now used. This pain was his penance for ripping this man from his life, his way of giving some comfort for the wrongs he had done. _

Jimmy smiled brightly. Claire was fifteen, top of her class in high school and pitcher for the Varsity softball team. He couldn't be more proud of his daughter, the light of his life who blushed when she cursed, hit almost every single mailbox on their street learning how to reverse and would still play with her dad in the evenings.

It was boardgames now instead of dolls and tea parties but he treasured the time he had with her. The way her face lit up when she smiled, how she pouted when he beat her at Shoots and Ladders and did a celebratory dance whenever she beat him in Monopoly. When she finally convinced him to play Trivia Pursuit, she beat him squarely in that as well.

Claire told him she was going to become a doctor so she could help people. He could see the lingering fear in the back of her eyes whenever she looked at him, remembering that year he had vanished and how her mother couldn't do it anymore, but Claire stuck by him. Helped him get better and he loved her all the more for it.

_Castiel would watch Jimmy sometimes, watch him interact with this dream world he had created for the soul inhabiting this body. Jimmy's smile whenever dream-Claire was in the room. Jimmy's laugh when dream-Claire said something funny. Jimmy's life, that he had taken away from him. He felt something like regret. He hadn't thought about it before, but Jimmy had been a father and a husband and He, Castiel, had taken it all away. Forever. _

Jimmy occasionally looked down at himself, recognizing the black suit and blue tie as the best clothes he owned. When had he last changed out of them? When did he put them on? He couldn't remember, the details fled from him on wings...wings. He looked behind himself.

There, arching black wings. The wings of an Angel. His eyes went wide in horror as memory returned and...Castiel! He had said Yes to him. Again. So why was he in his living room...

He wasn't. The books, toys, games in front of him disappeared. A white circle, characters inscribed around the edge, characters he recognized from Castiel's mind, and a rune directly in the middle. That Angel language, a language that should never be in his house...

He wasn't in his living room. There was no Claire. Claire was with her mom, far far away from him.

Nothing was real...it was all a dream...it was all...

Everything faded.

_Castiel retraced a glowing rune into Jimmy's soul. He redrew the Enochian spell in Grace. He rebuilt Jimmy's imaginary world. He remade dream-Claire. He put out the board games and the toys and the books. Then he let Jimmy wake up into this false world and watched him smile as dream-Claire opened up Monopoly. _

_It was the least he could do._


	5. V Broken Mind, Woven Flowers

This is also a piece from the SPN tumblr party I did, also under the prompt Rational Thoughts/Dream/Confession tag. It's what I imagine Castiel's mind went through as it tried to process the insanity he took from Sam. Spoilers through 7x17.

_Italics _and plain text are different times/different perspectives of the same event from Cas's mind.

~~~~~~~This is a Beginning~~~~~~~

_The world was new and bright and shiny. He had woken from his haze of pain and confusion and hallucinations and everything was strange. _

His head throbbed and beat with the pulse of his vessel's heart. His fingertips pounded the sheets 1-2-2-1-2-2-1-2-2-1...his heart was racing. His brain was not...not functioning right. What was wrong? What had happened?

_The bees were yellow and black. He liked that color combination. Light against dark and dark against light. The flowers waved at him, inviting him to join them in their dance with nature. He wanted to, he did. _

There was a plastic bracelet on his wrist. It said his name was Castiel. Yes, yes, it was. But that wasn't right either. No...he had a different name too. Something...something else. He had stolen the other name. It was...it was a name that belonged to a little girl and a woman and a home.

_Everything was peaceful. It all made so much sense now. This interconnectedness of nature and man. Humans and demons and angels all together. There was an energy, connecting life and death, heaven, earth and hell. How had he missed it for so long?_

There was a lingering energy on his tongue, a pain that was his...wasn't his...was his fault? He caught glimpses of a melting face mocking him but it vanished quickly. Then all he felt was guilt and rage and pain and guilt. It dragged him to the ground and filled his soul and body and mind.

_He was a blind man...no, he wasn't a man. He was in a man, a human. A human whose name he had forgotten for the moment. The trenchcoat he held onto used to belong to the man, but the man wasn't here anymore. The man used to have a suit, black and white with a blue tie. He had liked that suit. He wondered where it went, but that wasn't important. He wanted to study cats now. _

No...no...he hadn't...he couldn't...it wasn't his fault! It couldn't be his fault! He had killed...everyone. With his hands...his brothers and sisters...he had destroyed them. What had he done? What had he done? He clenched his skull and moaned. What had he done?

_He was learning so much. The world was so vast and beautiful and amazing. He set out to collect flowers. Flowers were pretty and they smelled nice and he really wanted some with him. A reminder of the world's amazing capacity for beauty. _

Nothing mattered anymore. He had betrayed everyone. Everything. He had killed his siblings, the humans, those he had said he would protect. He had destroyed them and lost his friends', his new family's, trust. He had destroyed the soul of the man who had lived in this body. James Novak. James Novak was gone. James Novak was in Purgatory and Castiel had put him there.

_He sat on the floor and laid out the flowers in front of him, forming a circle. It was a game now. He could compare the flowers. See the beauty of each flower, match the colors and the sizes and the shapes. One pile would be for Dean. All the flowers that were beautiful but damaged belonged to the Dean Pile. One pile would be for Sam. All the flowers that were strong and enduring belonged to the Sam Pile. One pile would be for Castiel. All the broken and beaten flowers belonged to the Castiel Pile. One pile would be for James Novak. All the perfect and forgotten flowers, those people didn't remember, belonged to the James Novak Pile. _

He couldn't breathe, he couldn't see, he couldn't move. Overwhelming guilt was unbearable. So he reached for that foreign pain he had tasted. It was pain he could handle. It was pain that held redemption. He took it. He tasted it. He drank it in. _He felt the world shift. _

He wasn't looking at the world he knew. _The world was beautiful and clean and pure. _This was Sam's pain, he could tell from the ache of self-loathing. _It didn't matter, it wasn't his pain and he could handle this pain. _He sat in a circle and looked at the flowers. _He picked up the Castiel Pile and turned them over in his hand, wondering if they were worth saving. _He put them down and took a flower from the Dean Pile and the Sam Pile, then took a flower from the Castiel Pile. _He wove them together and set it aside. _This would be his redemption. _He would live in this waking dream and create his woven flowers and try to search for forgiveness. _He braided another Dean flower with a Sam and Castiel flower and set it aside. _He had 98 more to go before he could get his wish._


End file.
